This blog explores the totality of some cool things.

One of my favorite things about things sucking or being cool is that none of it is static. Things suck for a while and they become less and less popular and then all of the sudden someone who is cool decides that the thing that sucks is cool; then all of the sudden that thing is cool again. On the other hand some things are cool for so long and become so popular that they start to suck. For example hipsters:

Notice the intentionally mismatched clothes, the calculated disheveledness, the bad glasses? that's not an easy look to create. Part of the reason that these hipsters are so cool is because they worked so hard to look like they hate the idea of cool. By doing so they've actually moulded cool into the shape of a hipster.

Now look at these squares wearing the new hipster onesies avalible at Macys. Part of the reason that they embody suck so much is that they didn't work at looking shitty. These outfits just have three snaps in the back, it's just too easy. Time took hipster shaped cool and somehow turned it into hipster shaped suck.

The Cool / Suck Spectrum isn’t just affected by time it’s also a regional thing. I know it’s way over talked about but a great example of this is Mullets; in Europe and South America mullets are perfectly acceptable for cool people. Here’s a couple of examples with their American counter parts:

Look at how confident this European mullet is.

This American mullet is equally confident but i think we call all agree that he's infinitely douchier

Here's an Argentinean mullet grabbing a fence that he's clearly prohibited from touching.

Here's another American mullet, no doubt watching as his friends rape some city folk.

What does the future hold for cool and suck? Who knows? But my guess is that old school cellphones are on the way back in. Nobody is using them anymore and that’s a pretty good indication that they are really cool.

Ergonomic toilet seats, Band-Aids that look like strips of bacon, cellular telephones, saying the full name of things, cartoons that are not intended to be viewed by children, astrophysicists, Canada, home made clothes (well some home made clothes),

house plants, geodesic domes, that book Buckminster Fuller wrote: Untitled Epic Poem On The History Of Industrialization, nano-bots, coffee, Reggae, sustainability,

Laser floss, silent bullets (bullets aren’t especially cool because they kill more people than moustaches, but if they were silent, now that would be something worth noting, and possibly even referring to as cool)

When you say something seriously and then people laugh because they think you’re joking and then you can say, “No but seriously, sharks DO have very sharp teeth and your father probably DID die a very painful death.”

So when I was in Junior high I had this word processor, and I used it. I used it to make these lists; the two that people liked the most were “Things that are cool” and “Stuff that sucks”. They were by no means exhaustive, I mean really how would that even be possible? Seriously? how could someone keep up with all the new stuff that is sucking all the time?

In this last year I’ve been getting lots and lots of requests to recreate these two lists. Of course I can’t capture that youthful idealism that I used to have; I think all the pockets of my identity where the hope and fantasy used to live are all musty and caustic from the cynicism that I’ve been growing in there. What I mean is that I can’t possibly recreate those lists, but what I can do is update the idea, or at least try. I mean I can’t decide what’s cool and what sucks, I”m just really good at identifying which group things fall into.

Well I guess it’s not that cut and dry but something can’t be cool at the same time as it sucks.

Since, as I mentioned, I won’t be able to list everything that is cool and everything that sucks, you may have to send my your thoughts of things that I’ve missed. I wrote some stuff out this morning over breakfast (by morning I mean 12:00).